Why do you think they failed to get Bin Laden in Tora Bora? Why do you think Bush AND Obama failed to put a big enough overwhelming force in Afghanistan to WIN?
It was viewed as unpopular. Bush was concerned that too large of a presence would anger Muslims world-wide. And it was becoming unpopular with Americans. Everything revolves around what’s popular and what will win votes. There was not one bit of logic that went into Tora Bora or Gitmo. But it happened anyway. Everything got reduced down to ‘Bush is a war monger’ and ‘Our troops are going house to house terrorizing women and children’ and ‘our troops are killing civilians in cold blood’. It became a war to win politically rather than actually winning the war. The propaganda won; propaganda targeted at voters.
This is crap.
We had enormous global support and sympathy immediately after 9/11. Bush had thrown down the gauntlet; bin Laden, dead or alive. None of that support was gone in a mere three months. But, then, the decision was made that if bin Laden got killed by a bomb, so be it but, on the ground, December of '01, it was decided to back our people off and let the locals finish him off for political reasons and pressures that did NOT exist at that time. It was a horrible, illogical, stupid call and one you simply can't get back.
Further, no sane person thought INVADING Afghanistan made ANY sense. It is NOT the graveyard of Empires for nothing. For every thing Iraq had going for it, a decent middle class, political opportunities, infrastructure, that made it a fair bet that we could succeed in transforming it to a pro Western ally, Afghanistan was just the opposite; the worst possible imaginable chances.
We went in there for one and only one reason; to satisfy the military/industrial complex. There was NOTHING political about it other than the embarrassment of bin Laden not even being there anymore. So, we compound the mistake by going big.
For crying out loud, concern for angering Muslims? What could be worse than just going half assed, dragging killing and destruction out, winning nothing and killing people for NO gain while looking weak and inept in the process?
If Bush did NOT understand he had to get on with and win whatever war he chose to engage in, then he is a bigger fool than I think. There was NO circumstances possible that would allow war to just drag on and NOT reach the political realities you cite. Those realities dictated GET ON WITH IT AND WIN NOW or don't go. And there was NO political opposition worth mentioning for the first few years. Bush had what every politician wants; a clear field and a free hand. He blew it. Horribly.
Mistakes get made. Big ones. Enormous ones. Wilson dragging us into WWI. Korea. Vietnam. That mistakes get made does not excuse them. It is just heart breaking that we put down the ghosts of Vietnam in the early 90's, that we DID know how to go win and do it and yet a mere decade later, forgot the unforgiving rules of war.
Worse, all the FBI needed was a memo saying go get 'em and 9/11 may well never have happened. Instead, they got the ghosts of JFK, the wall between CIA and FBI sharing information and, instead of a piece of paper, we go BIG again and get DHS, TSA, the militarization of Mayberry police departments and a whole new bureaucracy that now must be fed.
You talk of politics, of removing the responsibility of choices, that, somehow, Bush's hands were tied. That is crap. He just chose poorly. That's all. While political implications are real and are enormous factors, there is NOTHING that hurts you more politically than making the wrong choices and failing.
It is not for nothing that the media and the D's can point to the failures of the GOP; we did. We failed.
And now we're dealing with the results.
We can play woulda, coulda, shoulda but, what we can't get around is the results.
